One Foot in the Middle Ages.

One of the greatest things about living in the center of a city as ancient as Paris is that you can go into a historical trance whenever you want to. 

I discovered this the other morning, having hurried to the Rue Saint-Jacques-only to find that my appointment there had been put back half an hour. I could have killed the time in a cafe, watching the Latin Quarter go by, but I did something better.  I went into a trance. 

The Latin Quarter is so called because throughout the Middle Ages the students who came from all over Europe to Paris' great university used Latin to communicate with each other.  Summoning up what I remembered of medieval times and disregarding the occasional fast-food shop, I began to wander 'round the old streets leading off the Rue Saint-Jacques.  Soon, in my mind's eye, I had the narrow lanes streaming with unkempt or pious students-and, among them, the great poets Dante and Petrarch, the great doctors Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, deep in disquisition or intrigued by the fantasies of the manuscript illuminators whose studios opened out onto the street.  

Slipping through the crowd came the shadow of François Villon François Villon François VillonFrançois Villon, poet and twice accused of murder, whose name alone evokes all the harshness of the period. In his wake the dark alleyways grew darker with cloaked figures whose taste for learning was paralleled by such unruliness that even their practical jokes ended in injury or imprisonment, if not death.

But the crudeness and violence were tempered by comparable extremes of spirituality. Religion and learning were indissoluble; and if much of the area was given over to the schools, even more belonged to the church. Built in Roman times, the Rue Saint-Jacques, as the Via Supera, was the main route to the south, and each year it was trodden by hundreds of pilgrims on their way to Saint James of Compostela, in Galicia, Spain. Many of them would have paused, or even spent the night, at the nearby church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre.

Saint-Julien is a dream in itself. No fewer than six centuries before work began on Notre Dame, a stone's throw to the north, an important chapel stood on this venerable site. Norman invaders destroyed it in 885, and it was not rebuilt until the twelfth century.
  

Since then, Saint-Julien-called "le Pauvre" after a bishop, Julian the Confessor, who gave away all he had-has experienced both fame and neglect. It was saved from the latter when the Greek Catholics known as Melchites took it over in 1889.

 Nowadays, the east end of the church is cut across by an iconostasis, the Eastern Orthodox screen that sets off the sanctuary. Other icons adorn the walls. The air is heavy with incense. Soon, black-bearded Greek priests will take up their sonorous chant, wafting one's thoughts eastward to Byzantium. Before this happens the half hour strikes; the trance is over, and the present reclaims its own.

Finding Inspector Lewis.

From Christ Church meadows to the vast university museum, no tour of Oxford could be as enchanting as the one conducted by a mathematician with a very special kind of logic. Charles Dodgson-known to us as Lewis Carroll-sprinkled references to the university (he was a scholar for 47 years) throughout the stories he created for little Alice Liddell.

Ah, but there was Charles, he loaded the car with baskets of choice comestibles, cranked the engine and we set out on Friday morning on a leisurely jaunt trundling along the roads through the Shire until we spotted the perfect place for a gourmet repast, and then drove on to Oxford.

She is a city of “weathered cloister and worn court,” a “grey city of strong towers and clustering spires,” exulted 19th-century poet Lionel Johnson, who also showered Oxford with a wealth of regal compliments. “A queen in pride of place,” he wrote, “beauty’s home."

Oxford sits aside the Thames, called Isis here. Its flowing waters-and those of its tributary the Cherwell-carry punting boats along on afternoons. Alongside the waters are meadows as peaceful as the drift of the boats, willow lanes where strolling and jogging are equally acceptable, and the Botanical Gardens. “The sky was laid below me in azure anemones,” wrote the poet Anne Ridler, and “the willows wept against the sun like rainbows, and punts as lazy as clouds slipped by beneath.”

Alas, it was a grey overcast day. “Our two weeks of summer are over,” remarked Charles.

” I have a surprise for you. He won’t tell where we are going until we arrive at The Trout Inn (one of Lewis and Morse’s favorite stop for a pint). So did we, make that several pints, and a scrumptious meal.

There is poetry, too, in the church bells of Oxford, forever reminding us that it is a city of the Middle Ages, a city where the Church was the font of life’s daily patterns.  The hall, the chapel in each college and the common gathering places-all reflect the monastic time.

Christ church Cathedral, a haughty Norman structure, rests in gardens walled to shelter its splendor. St. Mary the Virgin sprawls next to the 18th-century Radcliffe Camera, a magnificent rotunda that is the private preserve of students.

I did find signs of Inspector Lewis everywhere I went. Most places were reminiscent of scenes from episodes. Charles had no clue what I was all about.

And so each building at Oxford can be described, set in its time, delineated by its architecture, and filled with the personal stories of the students and the dons who had so blissfully resided here.

The architecture of Oxford, Wordsworth called the “sacred Nurseries of blooming Youth,” overwhelms the visitor as much as its academic history. From the simplest to the most extravagant, Oxford presents a 700-year lesson in the architecture of England. Limestone found locally was turned into buildings with Gothic grandeur, Elizabethan decoration, and the classical prowess of Christopher Wren, architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Baroque and High Victorian reside together as comfortably as scholars do. The landscape they are part of is so beloved and praised that Oxonians who have beauty’s home most often become prophets of its life and spirit.

Mathew Arnold perhaps said it best: “Beautiful city!...spreading her gardens to the moonlight…Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic!”

“I have another surprise for you Clive.” Charles told me Saturday morning. After a blissful night’s sleep I was unsuspecting of Charles’ little scheme.

“I have reserved a place for you in the “Lewis and Morse” tour, so hurry up, get ready, I will drop you off.” He smiled to himself. “You will have fun visiting all your favorite haunts and meet-up with so many American compatriots too boot.”

“And what may you be doing?” Ask I.

“I will have fun exploring roads less traveled.”

Charles enjoying the out of the box experience. Roving down memory lane? I see. So like Inspector Morse!

Nevertheless, the story of this picture Charles will not divulge. I have my ways. I am really starting to think like Inspector Lewis. Watch out Charlie.

So we did, have fun, one finding Inspector Lewis, and one, hmm, avoiding Inspector Lewis?

P.s.:

Following is a list of Oxford hometown expressions. I am NOT divulging how I found out.
No, Charles I will not tell.


Academics
Ah, of course. Why we're all here. Because we were the best and brightest of our various sixth forms. So people will (obviously) take their work very seriously. They'll intimidate you with their summer reading (voluntary of course) and will leave you to wallow in your awkward ‘I don't know the answer to that question’ silence in tutorials. Who cares? You'll be the one with all the stories about vomming on your shoes. Who's the real winner eh?

Bops
The awful Oxford slang for a college disco. Some are raucous and amazing fun, some are awful (Merton...) most play Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ at least once. All have potent cocktails that will burn your taste buds off. Invariably fancy dress, but it's not like school: the cool kids all dress up. In costumes that took more time to plan than your vac essay. Seriously.

Babylove
Where the cool kids hang out. Sweaty, small and too cool for its own good. Edgy hair and ironic dress only.

Bride
The foil of Babylove, just as sweaty. Cheesy fun. And it has a stripper pole that rugby boys tend to flock round. Unexplained. Just don't get 'Anuba'd'. Anuba is the bar (waiting room) you go to if the queue for Bridge is too long. You'll be given a ticket like when you bought your school shoes from Clarks. No night can recover.

Bod
Short for 'Bodleian Library'. Seriously, go to your fresher orientation otherwise you will never find your way round. And it’s seriously embarrassing going as a third year, and asking where you get books out from, trust me. Don’t try to take them home, you can’t, and you’ll be rugby tackled by a security guard if you try.

Crew dates.
A very unique Oxford thing. One all girl 'crew' (think netball team, drinking society, women's elephant polo club) goes for a curry or to a formal hall with another all boy crew (rugby team, drinking society, general lads). Can be between colleges or uni wide. One side pays for dinner; the other provides the wine (minimum one bottle per person). General hilarity ensues in the form of drinking games and copping off with each other. Although Cherwell advises against the latter.

Collections
Beginning of term exams used to check you weren’t telling porkies about how much work you did. Taken in various degrees of seriousness – some are in exam conditions, some you’re allowed to take back to your room. Don’t panic about them, very uncool. Go for studied nonchalance instead.

Drinking societies.
Ah, infamous tabloid fodder. Some are just as elite as described – despite various equality committees trying to intervene and spoil their fun. Each college has their own, with their own bizarre traditions. Initiations are a must. The infamous ‘Buller’ is now supposedly struggling for members- it's now cooler to turn it down than to accept. The first rule of equally infamous Piers Gav is you don't talk about Piers Gav (just google it). Christ Church Cardinals throw the best party every term, but don't be fooled by the black tie. Ain't nothing classy about their 'cocktails'. Girls drinking societies are a bit of an oxymoron, but they do try.

Don
A college tutor. Derived from the Latin dominus meaning variously master, lord, owner, host. A strange species that comes in wildly different forms. Some are old school and will offer you a glass of wine and spend the whole hour talking about opera, some will let you call them by their first name, some are terrifying and are not to be crossed. Most cannot be fooled, and they’ve seen every trick in the book. And have probably already read that essay you’re trying to pass off as your own. You will, however, learn their traits and your own tricks for getting around them, even if it is just to avoid eye contact and sudden movements.

Entz/Entz Reps

Short for Entertainment, your Entz Reps will arrange the bops and other super fun events - think chocolate orange world record attempts. club nights as well as your Freshers' Week, film nights, and selling tickets for club nights throughout term. Be nice to them and they'll save you tickets and tell you what's happening.

Essays
Ban the phrase 'essay crisis' from your vocabulary. It's irritating, and if you have one, it's your own entire fault. Yes, you will get lots of them, particularly if you do a humanity, but get over it. There's some myhtical guideline that says you can only be set sixteen in a term. Maybe that's not very comforting. Double spacing is your best friend (the pages multiple, like magic!). And despite what you may think, doubling the expected word count will not impress your tutor. You're just giving them more to cover in red pen.

Examination Schools
Where Prelims, Mods and Finals are held (more on those later). On the High Street. Also where you’ll have to hand in any finals coursework. Not really a place of laughs and giggles.

Fuzzy ducks
The Brookes night, in the O2 in Cowley. Voted the fifth easiest place to pull in some lads’ mag, some time ago. Buy your ticket in advance, and take your breath mints. Not for the faint hearted.

Finals
Final examinations at the end of 3 or 4 years as an undergraduate. Some degrees are divided in to Part Ones (taken at the end of second year) and Part Twos (taken at the end of third or fourth year) much to the annoyance of people actually trying to have fun at the end of their term. Finalists can be recognized by a permanent caffeine shake and the deep scowl if people even whisper loudly in the library. Probably best avoided in Trinity term.

Fresher
First years. Will be said with distain by some second years, who have conveniently forgotten they were one just a year ago. Don’t do anything too outrageous in Freshers’ Week because the nickname ‘Fresher Slut/Lad/Douche/Sick’ etc will stick for the rest of the year. Technically you should only be called a Fresher in your first term, but no one pays any attention to that. And you'll be told to “Down it, Freshaaaaaa!”, quite a lot.

G and D’s
An Oxford cafe - one in Cowley, one on St Aldates - specializing in ice cream and bagels. Always busy after nine as people avoid work and get their caffeine fix, but it's expensive... But it IS open ‘til midnight. So, swings and roundabouts.

Gown
Short and armless if you’re not a scholar, long and more batman like if you are. Also refers to the University in the phrase ‘Town vs. Gown’ – the ever-bubbling tension (apparently) between students and the normal people of Oxford.

Cheers.

In Michelangelo’s footsteps (Campidoglio)

According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21, 753 B.C.

The first villages were clusters of dwellings on the Capitoline and Palatine that over the centuries spread over the hills and lowlands on the banks of the Tiber, communities so small that half a dozen could fit into the piazza of St. Peter’s. The village feeling has never changed. Rome remains a chain of enchanting communities with great monuments at the center of each.

Rome is above all a treasury, artistically the richest in the world, and it is a time machine. Fourteen feet down, antiquity lies. Dig out a cellar, and you will find a foundation stone laid in imperial times; enlarge a parking lot, and fragments of statues will turn up; enter a church crypt, and you are surrounded by paganism. Antiquity goes straight up too. What edifice, from early Christian shrines to palaces of the high baroque, is not constructed from pagan remains?

Rome is a city that never tires of proclaiming its importance. Hardly a building is without dozens of inscriptions, graffiti, sets of papal and familial arms. Whispers and murmurs from the past envelop everything.

No city on earth has fewer social demarcations or architectural ghettos. Modest shops and dwellings flank grandiose palaces. This unself-conscious mix of rich and poor, titled and bourgeois, makes for a special magic.

Eleven “villages” make up the urbs et orbis, the city and the world, that is Rome. One can devote to each a half day or a lifetime. Each possesses its own heart and soul.

The “Village” of the Campidoglio

Here the spiritual heart of pagan Rome, site of the sacred temple of Jove, still beats. Pillaged countless times in the name of faith and order, the place has had a long, tough history. The Christians sacked the pagan buildings, barbarian hordes destroyed the churches, what remained from medieval times was laid waste by sixteenth- and nineteenth-century planners, and, finally, the Fascists carved up everything to fashion their boulevards. Despite all that and the whirlwind of traffic, grandeur still cloaks this, the truly “eternal” village.

Getting around on foot is best. Start by climbing Michelangelo’s stairs, the Cordonata, past the sentinel sphinxes and the ancient Roman trophies, and enter the piazza with his Palazzo Nuovo on the left, the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the right, and the Senate as backdrop. The bronze emperor on horseback is Marcus Aurelius. Michelangelo’s buildings in golden travertine combine power, delicacy, pomp, and human grace.

The Capitoline Museum, the world’s oldest -a hodgepodge of antiquities, many over restored – is still worth a visit. You will see the moving Dying Gaul, the battered Victory, owned by one of the last pagan senators of Rome, and the gallery that displays marble busts of all sixty-five emperors.

The Palazzo dei Conservatori is a labyrinth of exhibition halls, containing some magical things. In the grand court – once the Emperor Constantine’s basilica-are the fragments of his monumental statue: head, hand, feet, leg, and arm.

The spectacular marble altarpiece commemorates Claudius’s conquest of England. Upstairs in the picture gallery seek out Guercino’s huge painting of Saint Petronilla (with blues of imcomparable intensity)-a masterwork (note Ms. Edna). In the Salla della Lupa is the haunting and primitive Roman She-Wolf, the Etruscan bronze of the sixth century B.C., with Romulus and Remus, who were added in the fifteenth century.

Instead of trudging through the Forum, save yourself some trouble and look down on it from the Senate-one of the most evocative views in Rome.

Few visit the antiquarium on the Palatine, with a graffito of a Christian kneeling in devotion before a crucified donkey-headed man, inscribed”Alexamenos aderes his god.”

The monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the “Vittoriano,” is garish, yet a magnificent example of late nineteenth-century style at its most regal, puffed up with pride and exploding with confidence. The views of the neighborhoods from its deserted porticoes are fabulous.

Among the least-appreciated works of art in Rome are the flat wooden ceilings of its “hall” churches, heavily gilded and chock-full of armorial devices. Two of the best are in San Marco and in S. Maria in Aracoeli, atop the Capitoline Hill.

The strident Palazzo Venezia, once Mussolini’s residence, is now a dispirited museum stuffed with objects d’art. Two alone make a visit worthwhile: the intricately inlaid ninth-century casket from Terracina and the stupendous silver Orsini Cross, of 1344.

In the seldom visited upper part of Trajan’s Forum the ancient buildings are astonishingly well preserved. Unfortunately, the deterioration of one edifice-the thirteenth-century Torre delle Milizie, once thought to be the place where Nero fiddled-at least temporarily prevents one from seeing the splendid vista from its top.

Finally, plunge into the teeming streets and piazzas around the Teatro di Marcello, the Portico of Octavia, and the old ghetto, where there is a series of small, beautiful palaces and refurbished private houses.

The area has an abundance of excellent restaurants. The following are among the best (book in advance).

Da Piperno, (Via Monte dei Cenci 9, ph 06 6880 6629, www.ristorantepiperno.com). Closed Sunday evenings, Mondays, Christmas, Easter, and August. For carciofi, funghi porcini in season, superior pasta with tomato sauce, and very good house wines.

Il Pompiere (Via Santa Maria de' Calderari 38, ph 06 686 83 77). It is closed on Sunday. A huge first-floor dining room with frescoed ceilings. Its prices are reasonable and the food is great. Try the carciofi alla giudia, filetti di baccala, and keep some room for a slice of ricotta and sour plum tart supplied by the Jewish bakery around the corner.

Da Giggetto (Via del Portico di Ottavia, ph. 06 686 11 06, giggettoalportico.com). Closed on Monday. Has been serving Roman Jewish cooking for years (the deep-fried artichokes are especially good).

Ristorante Angelino a Tor Margana (Piazza Margana 37, ph 06-6783328). For the good old heavy cooking you thought had vanished with the nineteenth century.

Vecchia Roma (Piazza Campitelli 18, ph 656-4604). Closed Wednesday. Beautiful inside and out, famed for its fish, vegetables and desserts, its antipasti di pesce is unequaled in the entire city.

Bar Brasile (in the Piazza Venezia ph 066 795706). Where the world seems to stop in.

Toto (Via Portico d’Ottavia 2) makes a legendary cappucino.

climbing Michelangelo's stairs(again)

Arrived safe via small detours courtesy of Charles thank you very much.

Back to school and preparation for FINALS.
(I remember your recipe for cramming, black coffee, and orioles’.)

I promise upcoming posts about "Rome for the discriminating".

Your devoted...